This week I find myself at the “Louisville Farm Show”, the super bowl of agriculture in North America.  There is nothing quite like it, especially in Canada.  I might be a bit late because of a mid winter snow storm, but I’ll be there.  Many other Canadian farmers find themselves in the same vote.  If you have a question about agriculture go to Louisville in the second week of February.

Louisville is what it is.  Canadian farm shows needs to be like Louisville.  If they don’t change they will become increasingly irrelevant.  Drop those admission fees get with the program.  I meet too many Canadian farmers more and more willing to travel an extra mile to find the latest thing.

So far I haven’t met any in Dhaka, Bangladesh.  However I’m sure amid the squalor and burning fires some January evening in the future that might even happen. That was the scene four years ago when your loyal scribe visited his last “computer show.”  I had told my co-author and friend Dr. A.K. Enamul Haque I wanted to go to the Dhaka Bangladesh computer show.  It was there where I saw my first iMac.  Learning about computer technology late on that Asian night was a great experience.  If only the poor people trying to stay warm around the fires could have experienced it too.

That is another story.  However, it crossed my mind this week as I started out for Louisville.  I was in Dhaka on vacation but I was going to the computer show because I like computer technology.  I’m going to Louisville for the same reason, albeit I’m also looking for opportunity.  Many other farmers are going for the same reason.  Yearning for technology and deseminating information is a farmer trait.  Finding the truth can often be a life long endevour.

I was reminded of that this past week when some major publications, the Washington Post and USA Today ran articles on farmer internet use.  It wasn’t that revealing to me because as a DTN columnist I kind of take that for granted my readers are some of the most technologically savvy farmers in North America.  It was pretty obvious to me that these major urban publications ran their pieces in the interest of their urban readers.  Portraying farmers as anything other than hayseed rubes often plays in big city urban publications.  As repugnant as that might seem to farmers, its exactly the case.  Regular farm stories have the half life in the urban media on a nano-second.

Case in point was an example of something used in Ontario last year on a regional television station.  As many of you know Ontario was a cauldron of farmer unrest last winter.  About that time I was told by a colleague in the TV media that his producer wasn’t interested in any more farmers protest stories.  Instead his producer ran a story about a funny dog instead. My colleague told me this because he wanted me to know farmers protest was losing resonance.  We’d better change our strategy.

So it is what it is. I had seen the “dog story” before but didn’t get it.  Finding out they ran that instead of farmers protesting for a risk management policy was a bit of a revelation to me.  In my mind that’s what the “FARMERS FEED CITIES” campaign so wildly popular in Ontario farm country was up against.

That will continue to be an uphill fight.  Yes, we’ll have more “dog stories” in the urban media but we’ll probably also have more “internet stories” about farmers which we saw last week.  I believe the internet hasn’t even begun to be utilized like it will in the future on today’s farms.  We might not be able to totally see our way ahead because of technological bandwidth limitation, but that will come.

How you say?  Think of a world where your planter and combine has it seed and grain flow monitored over the internet in real time.  That will come.  Think of a world where you have better weather reports beamed through wireless free signal into your tractor cab.  Think of a world where that hands free steering and RTK is even more streamlined through digital internet transfer from satellites.  Think of a world where the internet will unite buyers in Harbin, China and Chittigong, Bangladesh with sellers in Chaplin Saskachewan and Ste. Ange Quebec over a free seamless video link with automatic payments protocols.  The list will go on and on.

It’s pretty rare air compared to where we are now.  However, will farmers still get together to “kick some tires?”  I think so.  In this digital age a little fresh air and a good dose of reality can be good for you.